Low Point

Undoubtedly, the lowest point of the decade is the failure of the Atari 2600 and the subsequent collapse of the industry. Burned by too many bad games and confused by too many systems, consumers largely threw up their hands and found another fad to glom on to, like buying charity singles to cure world hunger. During the dark first half of the decade, videogame publishers died out en masse like the dinosaurs. Very few big names of the era exist now, such as Activision and Atari – but neither hold any recognizable link to their origins. However bleak the videogame world was, though, too many forget that the personal computing scene was doing just fine thanks to affordable machines like the Commodore 64… which really was just a game machine with a keyboard. But don't tell your folks that.

High Point

So, now that we have the downer of the videogame industry implosion out of the way, let's focus on the high point of the Reagan Era: the phoenix-like rebirth of videogames courtesy of Nintendo. The 1985 release of the NES completely revitalized videogames. It was not a monster from the get-go. There was still some trepidation in North America after the previous collapse. But to paraphrases Jeff Golblum from Jurassic Park, "Mario finds a way." (Actually, if Jeff Goldblum said it, it would be, "Uh, well, you see, Mario, Mario finds a, uh, a way. Yes, yes.") On the strength of Mario and later big names like Zelda, Nintendo, its NES and Game Boy, came to be synonymous with video games. By the end of the eighties, it appeared that Nintendo was able to do no wrong, which s probably why SEGA was able to blindside it at the end of 1989 with the Genesis.

Worst Peripheral

"I love the Power Glove. It's so bad." You cannot dispute the wisdom of The Wizard, although while the kid calling the Power Glove bad was using it in the Michael Jackson sense of the word, the rest of us that actually put a hand into it know how goofy it was. Mattel tried to convince you it was some proto-Minority Report controller, but it was just a NES pad glued to a sweaty sleeve. How do you play Punch Out with one hand facing the opposite direction from the d-pad? You don't, which is why you saw Power Gloves at garage sales for the entirety of the nineties -- until hipster nerds resurrected it as some ironic fashion statement in the last few years. Hey hipster nerds, you already killed "Nightmare Before Christmas." Please leave us retro videogames.

Bad Boy of the Decade

Jack Tramiel always had a reputation for being a merciless businessman, but without his mantra – "We need to build computers for the masses, not the classes" – it is likely that the PC scene would be very different today. After overseeing the launch of the successful Commodore 64 in 1982 Tramiel went on to buy Atari Inc. from Time Warner in 1984 and shepherded the launch of many popular Atari computers like the XE. Tramiel steps out every toe imaginable to get his way – but his way was often the right one, especially when he steered Commodore into the inexpensive computer market to undercut Japanese rivals.

However, the greatest story about Tramiel links into the one of the most fascinating artifacts of the creative anarchy of early eighties videogames: Atari's Swordquest contest.

Atari set about releasing a quadrilogy of near-impossible adventure games, each backed by a contest with amazing prizes, including a gold-and-platinum chalice decorated with precious stones and golden talisman with one stone for every sign of the zodiac, each valued at $25,000. However, Atari fell into disarray before the series was finished and the contest was cancelled just before the third prize -- a golden crown lined with aquamarines and diamonds -- could be given out. But the remaining prizes, the crown, the Philosopher's Stone (a hunk of white jade in a golden box), and the grand prize silver-bladed sword just… vanished. According to legend, they vanished right into the hands of Tramiel who refuses to say a single word about them.

No decade in videogame is marked with as much astounding creativity, risk, and innovation as the eighties. The whole world was freaking out over the threat of nuclear war and sought escape in blockbuster entertainment, from Star Wars to the videogames. Videogames were literally everywhere in the first half of the decade, from Pac-Man machines near supermarket checkouts to TRON on the big screen. But then, in the seeming blink of an eye, it all collapsed. The videogame crash of 1983 and 1984 almost wiped out an entire entertainment medium due to too many people releasing too much bad product in hopes of grabbing a piece of the pie. Consumers (this was before the rise of the hardcore gamer) just threw in the towel. And when Nintendo picked up the pieces in 1985, the videogame epicenter moved to Japan where it stayed until early in this decade.

The crash is an important lesson that the videogame industry ignores at its own peril. A dearth of quality games at exorbitant prices during a time of economic uncertainty is a dangerous formula. While the immediate fallout of the crash is the loss of employment and product, consider what else was lost when games tanked. Amazing ideas were percolating in garages and small R&D labs, such as the Atari Cosmos, a holographic game handheld. Poof. Gone. Losing this kind of near-insane ingenuity and creativity – the kind of creativity that gave the world the Vectrex, M.U.L.E., and Donkey Kong (really, do you think Donkey Kong could happen now?) – again would be a disaster.